85 Quotes by Joanna Newsom

I wasn’t interested in writing music that wasn’t beautiful for me to listen to.

I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don’t know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don’t think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.

I give away CDs at shows if someone wants a CD but doesn’t have any money. I wouldn’t want to do that forever.

And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns ’til the silence crept over me.

I definitely don’t subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.

I don’t look at people’s expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune – it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.

I can’t play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can’t do the key changes.

Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that’s what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.

I didn’t really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn’t realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It’s kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman’s parlor instrument.